In March 1978, I met my soulmate and the love of my life. He was a Kuwaiti graduate student completing his intensive English requirement before starting his graduate studies in Oral Pathology when we met by accident at our university’s student center. I had already been accepted into an MBA program in Miami, Florida which meant I was moving from Buffalo, New York where I grew up and we met. At the time, I definitely wasn’t looking to meet a life partner. Little did I know…

I often met my girlfriend, a fellow student at the university, in the student center on the North campus. She tutored foreign students in the intensive English program at the university in her free time and on that particular day, as we walked by one of the tables, she stopped to say hello to some of the students she knew. This group happened to be mostly Arabic speakers and were soon joined by a short, rather shy young man who looked older than the undergraduate students we’d been chatting with. It turns out, he was a graduate student and also taking the English course before entering his full-time Oral Pathology degree program. He shyly said hello to everyone and mentioned he was heading home in his car if any of the students needed a ride. As they left, my friend and I said goodbye. We didn’t think anything else about the encounter until a few days later when we bumped into some of the same students at a Lebanese restaurant near another part of the campus. After greeting each other and sharing which foods were our favorites, the short grad student invited my girlfriend and me to his apartment for a gathering of some friends. We told him we’d try to attend since we were looking for a bit of socializing in our free time.

The gathering was small and it was only six more weeks before I moved to Miami, Florida for grad school, so I was social but not very involved in a conversation with any of the guests except my friend. Then the shy, short grad student came over to me and asked me if I was enjoying the party. I didn’t want to seem unfriendly, so I told him I was interested in knowing more about where he was from. As an undergraduate history major, I enjoyed learning about different places, the culture, and customs. In my new friend’s case, I knew where Kuwait was on the map, but I didn’t know much more than that. In rather broken English, he told me about Kuwait and asked questions to get to know me. I still wasn’t interested in any kind of relationship but was happy to have someone to chat with. As a shy 22-year-old, I felt awkward in social situations, but there was something about this shy Kuwaiti that made me feel less awkward. Before we left the party, he invited my friend and me to an international student activity the following week. Suffice it to say, by the time I left for Miami we were more than just friends.

The year I spent in Miami was filled with studying and working part-time to support myself. It was also a year of long-distance phone calls and snail mail including postcards. I had decided I didn’t want to travel during my December holiday because I was working and also hated the snowy, cold weather in Buffalo. Instead, my boyfriend flew to Miami to visit me. We enjoyed our time together and became closer. I admired his caring towards me and compassion towards others. He told me he had two more years to complete his graduate program and then he would move back to Kuwait. Although I had deep feelings for him, I couldn’t imagine myself moving so far away from home, something that was always in the back of my mind. Moving forward in our relationship seemed out of reach.

Towards the end of my degree program, I began looking for a job. I preferred to stay in the southern United States where it was warmer and there were more opportunities for employment. I settled on an offer from a bank in Atlanta, Georgia. My boyfriend visited me there and we continued to keep in touch on the phone. After about a year in Atlanta, my boyfriend, who was close to finishing his degree, proposed to me. He initially said he could make a life in America but it would make more sense if we were both in the same place while he completed his degree. At the time, I wasn’t very happy at my job, so even though I said I would never move back to Buffalo, I resigned from my job, took a job in a bank in Buffalo, and headed home. Within a year, my fiance had completed his degree and moved back to Kuwait. In spite of thinking he could manage life in America, he returned home. His mother became ill and he needed to be back in Kuwait to travel with her to Germany for treatment. I had already quit my job and packed my worldly possessions to follow him and get married there, but plans were put on hold until he returned from Germany. In the meantime, many of my friends told me I shouldn’t trust him to follow through on his promise. However, I believed him and in the six years we had been together, he’d never given a reason to doubt his promise.

At the end of September 1984, he called me from Kuwait and told me he was arranging a flight to London where we would meet up after almost a year apart and spend a few days before heading to Kuwait. I appreciated the chance to break up the trip and to see a place I’d always dreamed of visiting. Our days in London were spent enjoying live theater, visiting museums, and eating yummy food at wonderful restaurants. Then it was time to travel to Kuwait to get married and settle down. It wasn’t the first time I had been to Kuwait. My fiance invited me to see his home and meet his family in 1980 to make sure it was a place I would be happy. Truth be told, I would have been happy anywhere as long as we were together.

It has been more than thirty-six years since I moved to Kuwait and I have never regretted my decision. My husband and I have had our ups and downs like all married couples, but our friendship and love for each other has carried us through every difficult situation. If you had told me in February 1978 that I would be living in Kuwait and returning to Buffalo, New York in the middle of winter to visit my family who still lives there, I wouldn’t have believed you. But that’s exactly what happened and because I feel a sense of belonging in both places, I feel fulfilled and so blessed.